This is an interview with Mrs. Preston, Frances’ childhood friend on the day of Frances Newton’s execution, September 14, 2005

On Wednesday 14th September 2005, Frances Newton became the third woman to die in Texas’ death chamber since executions resumed in 1982, and the first black woman to be executed in the state since the Civil War.

What’s in an apology? Some expressions of remorse are commonplace — we hear them on the playground when kids smack each other on the head, or they land in your inbox after a friend forgets your birthday. It’s the grand-scale apologies, it seems, that are harder to come by.

On July 17, the California legislature quietly approved a landmark bill to apologize to the state’s Chinese-American community for racist laws enacted as far back as the mid–19th century Gold Rush, which attracted about 25,000 Chinese from 1849 to 1852.